Theories of Landscape as Urbanism, Infrastructure

Final project for Pierre Belanger's theory course. 

After a long break (with back posts to come) Storm King

A trip to Storm King, in Beacon NY:

Plant Ecologies: Becoming a Tree Advocate

In this assignment we were asked to pick a nearby area with a conspicuous lack of trees, and create a rendering to advocate for their use in the space. I chose an open area above a sunken street that divides Harvard in half. I tried to advocate for Japanese Tree Lilacs, but in placing them in lines over the structure of the tunnel below, I could have actually used a much larger tree species, such as catalpas (it would be pretty awesome to drive under a linear grove of fully mature catalpas). Ah well, this is how we learn. I was going for a Yves Brunier rendering, but missed that goal a bit as well.

The idea of the design was to highlight the structure of the road going beneath, while slowing traffic and providing shade and seating, while finding a tree that could stand the harsh conditions of the soil and the location. The raised planters would offer more soil for the trees to grow in, as well as provide seating.

Representation: Am I going to be stuck in orange and black forever?

We were asked to create a raster-based graphic or diagram to express something. Well, after looking fruitlessly for the right idea to try and create a Tufte-approved diagram, I just decided to highlighted the urban infrastucture we all miss, as I walked to school. T-shirt anybody?

Studio 1111: Project 1.3: Building a Park (without context)

Project 1.3 was tough. we were given a few patterns used in some iconic landscapes (don't remember which) and modified them to create our own pattern of units in a 25 meter by 38 meter "park space". we were asked to distribute 10% of the units as sub-grade (water), 30% of the units as paving, and the other 60% as porous materials. We could plant ground covers, perennials, and shrubs in the porous units, or leave them as "gravel" but only plant shrubs in the paving units. This was all about creating spaces within the limits of the park. without any context, or surroundings.

Without such context I had a hard time with the distribution and even the pattern creation for this, until I decided that I wouldn't create space but only create rules. i took a base grid of 1 square meter, and added a unit circle within it. the 4 edge spaces between the circle and the square were consolidated into a diamond-like form and added to one edge of the circle, thus creating an interlocking cell that had an area of 1 square meter still. extending these onto cells of 2, 3, and 4 units, I laid out a grid of progressively larger cells in a roughly circular fashion (in keeping with my circular pattern). I then, quite literally, rolled the dice (or in this case push-pins) to evenly distribute the 10% sub-grade, and 30% paving across the different cell sizes across the space.

This randomly generated base layer left me with a heterogeneous mix of cell types, but i realized that certain relationships existed between different cell types. I decided to take the heterogeneous nature of the landscape and shape it, not by deciding on a cell by cell basis what would be what (no pointing and saying "here shall be ______"). Instead I created a set of rules based on the cellular relationships:

1. All paving cells would stay as paving.

2. Any porous cells sharing a major part of it's edge with a sub-grade cell would become wetland

3. Any porous cells found between 2 paving cells could either be gravel or tall grasses.

4. Any groups of porous cells could become either turf/ground cover or shrubs

Rules 3 and 4 were the only chance for decision making I had. They both give me the opportunity to either improve circulation or create barriers within the space. By applying these rules I found that I often had few choices to make, yet I still had the ability to create rooms and pathways throughout the space using the few choices I had.

click here to enlarge image

click here to enlarge image

Studio 1111: Project 1.2: Building a topography

Exercise 1.2 was to take a small pavilion (for me, Lot-ek's shipping container) and insert it into yet another famous park (for me, Roberto Burle Marx's Praça Salgado Filho) We were to create 2 landforms to connect the top of the pavilion to the ground plane. We then flipped one of them and sunk it in the plaza (introducing cut and fill on a site).

After drawing this in Autocad, we created a series of sections, then modified them both vertically and in their orientation on the site, creating a completely new land form from the original. I had originally worked to integrate the pavilion into the open spaces of the park, but decided that the park needed more excitement. The extreme scaling (a progressive scaling of .4 on the sections) created an object that intersected the paths and plantings of the original park, creating excitement and opposition to the flow of the space.

An idea of how extreme the scale became (and how late at night I work sometimes)

Finally, in a nod to Marx, or possibly Ken Smith, I created the model and mapped the ways in which my topographic intervention interacted with the paths in red (originally white for the project, but the path form was just too interestingly curvilinear to keep it so boring)

Studio 1111: Project 1.1: Building a vocabulary

Project 1.1 was to take a famous landscape (For me,Dan Kiley's Miller Garden in Indiana) and superimpose a canopy layer of another (For me, Peter Walker's Keyaki Plaza in Tokyo). Then we overlaid a circulation system from ANOTHER famous landscape (For me, an extensively modified Maya Lin's Ecliptic Park, in Michigan). For me, the Miller Garden was extensively structured, and to overlay another structured planting (Keyaki) but to shift the alignment, would create a space with more tension, as the different geometries interacted. I was basically creating a grand Bosque, based on the French concept of the formal hunting grounds, with long veiws down the rows of trees. By multiplying the number of trees I changed the focus from the trees themselves to the openings between the planted areas. Adding the excessively curving Ecliptic pathways would allow one to wander through the space and experience these interactions between conflicting alignments, long views, and sudden openings. Hand Rendered (with a tree stamp)